Vengeance is Mine!
by SassyJ
Summary: AU. Dave Monks is back..... can Ant and Stu avoid the chop?
1. Chapter 1

There are times in a ex con's life when he realises that no matter what he does, his goose is very likely to be cooked. I was looking through my binoculars at one of those times. And the inevitability of being on the receiving end of huge helpings of pain ran through my head.

I should explain at this point that I am Anthony Monks, one time gangster, the gay eldest son of one Dave Monks, villain of this parish, all round thug and he was a pretty unpleasant individual too. I had gone to prison, and come out the other side with my dignity, and an outrageous plan, intact. I had put that plan into action, I had crossed the divide, become a private investigator, the poacher had turned gamekeeper for the love of the police officer that arrested me. Detective Sergeant Stuart Turner.

At first this scenario seemed about as likely as the second coming of Elvis, but something had definitely passed between us during our encounters on opposite sides of the law. Then the chance meeting. It was like something out of Casablanca, except there was no piano. The best part of nearly ten days spent peering at each other through binoculars, until one filthy wet night I opened my front door, to find an angry, confused, drowned rat on my doorstep. True he could have been there just to arrest me for something, but I had the vaguest inkling that that wasn't what he wanted.

So Stuart stepped over my threshold, we fell into each others arms and leaving a scattered trail of clothing, and something of a flood in the hallway we fell into bed. The rest, as they say, is history. By the time I was looking through my binoculars at hell on earth, Stu and I had been living together for nearly a year. We were happy and settled, and I wasn't about to lose that.

What was the cause of this sudden outbreak of nervousness? Well, the man I was looking at, who wasn't supposed to be there at all, that man was my father, Dave Monks. I cursed the imperfect system that had failed to warn us, because it wasn't just my neck at risk here. There was Max, the clever copper who had forced his hand, little Beth, the barmaid, only she wasn't a barmaid, she was a young copper who kept her head even after my charming parent had tried to slap it off her shoulders, my own beloved Stu, who had nicked me, and turned that one moment into the defining love affair of my life, I would have done anything for Stu, and not forgetting DCI Jack Meadows who orchestrated the entire thing. I owed him a very big one.

I knew my father. He was a sadistic bully, who thrived on pain, and dishing it out. He was going to try to get revenge, and that revenge was going to hurt, at the very least, knowing what I knew about him, there was a fair chance that that revenge would be fatal. I fished in my pocket, pulled out my mobile and hit speed dial. The only number programmed into my phone for speed.

"Hi lover, what's up?" He sounded cheery, which usually means he's having a good day, nicking the unrighteous. Which is pretty much Stu's favourite thing. He loves the interviews most of all. The opportunity to get the rodent to relax, get settled, be a bit expansive, get a tiny whiff of the cheese, reach for it and then BAM! All that always put Stu in a very good mood. I was about to rain on his parade.

"What's up luv, is that I am looking at one Dave Monks."

"You're kidding." he suddenly sounded rather serious.

"Large as life, and twice as evil."

"Shit." Stu wasn't big on swearing. So if he swore, you knew it wasn't good. "Ant, get out of there before he sees you, come by here, we need to talk to the guv."

"You had better round up the others."

He sounded very solemn and worried. "Ant, please be careful." He didn't have to tell me that, I wasn't planning on being anything else. The longer I could avoid any form of confrontation with my father, the better as far as I was concerned.

I cautiously withdrew, and cursed under my breath. One simple insurance fraud investigation had just turned into a nightmare. A nightmare which didn't just threaten me and my life, but the lives of the man I loved and several people that he worked with. My father wasn't going to care who he harmed in his seeking revenge. How did I know he would seek revenge? I'm his son, I know what he's done. I know what he's capable of. And he always took great pleasure in meting out suffering amongst any folk foolish enough to try and cross him. It was his method. I very much doubted that anything had changed that.

Trying to explain all this to Superintendent John Heaton was something of a disaster. Everyone was more than a little confused. Heaton stared at Stu, Stu stared rather defiantly back at Heaton. Max and Beth huddled together. Jack Meadows looked worried. And still Heaton didn't seem to get it. Then Stu snapped. He did have quite a short fuse, and worry over what my father might try and do to me lit it.

"With all due respect, Sir," he didn't sound remotely respectful and everyone knew it, "Ant and I live together" (and I was mildly surprised that he was openly confessing to being in a gay relationship in front of his colleagues) "Dave Monks finds Ant, he'll find me, and he may be an aggressive bastard but he isn't thick, he's going to put two and two together and the trail is going to lead right back here."

Heaton looked thoughtful, and not exactly convinced. I wondered why. Surely he knew the threat his officers were now under.

It was the end of the shift, Stu and I headed out together. He was stressed and frustrated. Heaton's lack of belief had really pushed his buttons. Max called out something about the pub, and Stu turned around.

"Max, what the hell just happened in there?"

Max shrugged. "Sounded a bit like us being hung out to dry to me." His expression was inscrutable at best, and that didn't mollify my irritated lover in the slightest. Stu was about to blow, I could tell.

"You two." An amused voice came from behind us, and I inwardly sighed with relief. Jo had a way of fixing problems which came in very handy. She went on, "Lara says that you two should come back with me." I didn't know whether to be relieved or frankly scared witless. Dr Lara Kennedy is DC Jo Masters' significant other. And trust me when I say she is very significant. I'm six foot. She tops me by two inches. Nothing makes her flinch. She has stood in the gravesites of thousands of victims of genocide, surrounded by the people who probably committed the crime, a thousand miles from so called civilisation and faced down cold eyed killers. Fearlessly.

I always considered myself quite tough. You couldn't have the upbringing I had, and led the life I used to lead without being tough, then I met Stu, and discovered there were different degrees of toughness. But Lara tops all of us. If ever there was one person I would seriously recommend my violent father didn't tangle with, it would be Lara Kennedy. Because she cares.

Does that sound strange? She cares. She cares so much that she will keep going for justice long after everyone else is exhausted and has given up. It's not about vengeance, as she explained to me one night when we were all pleasantly stuffed and reasonably drunk sat around in her battered conservatory come sitting room which also doubles as something of an office and an overspill laboratory, it's all about doing right by those who have been cruelly wronged.

Stu and I were occupying her battered leather sofa. Stu was worn out, and a bit more drunk than I was, the bottle of rum that was doing the rounds he had taken a couple of very hefty belts out of, he'd cracked his case, but it had come at a price and he was feeling a bit stressed by it all, so being well fed and quite drunk, he'd kind of keeled over sleepily into my arms. Jo had been partnered with him on that one, so she was fairly drunk and out of it too, curled up in one of the huge armchairs, her head resting in Lara's lap. One by one, Lara's housemates had drifted off to bed, leaving us, the bottle and our sleeping partners to it.

The bottle passed back and forth between us. I am not an educated man. I've done a lot of reading, prison does have that effect, but my education is considerably less than Stu's. Both he and Jo have degrees. But even they pale into not much next to Lara. She has a First in her Bachelor degree, two Masters, and a PhD. Sometimes she uses big words which are probably completely normal, even commonplace, in her world, but in mine, a complete mystery. But I had no difficulty understanding her that night. We talked for hours. I eased myself into a different position and cuddled my sleeping partner, as we talked about things. I found myself talking about things that I never expected to be able to share with another human being, including my feelings for Stu. She told me about digging up the dead in some hideous war-torn hell hole somewhere in central Africa, and her feelings for Jo. By the time the bottle came to an end, we were in tune with each other, and completely incapable of crawling away to bed.

An invite to Lara's inevitably contains a bottle of rum somewhere. The daughter of a Canadian merchant seaman, she has a capacity for the stuff which is quite startling. Well, I needed a drink badly. I looked across at Stu, caught the relief in his eyes, as he agreed with Jo.

We left Stu's car, and headed out to Lara's enormous and ramshackle house. It was at the end of a long road, of mostly gracious residences. You could generally spot the Kennedy house without the slightest difficulty, it was scruffy, it stood out like a sore thumb. Four battered Land Rovers stood in the drive. All four were usually filthy. And left in the drive in full view of the neighbourhood snobs.

Lara shared this monstrosity with Jo, and three of Lara's colleagues, into this monsterous regiment of women, Stu and I were the token blokes. We wedged the car in a gap between the filthy trucks, and climbed over the side gate. Lara wasn't into the house proud thing at all. Repairs were in order of structural priority, so the fact that the side gate had been rusted shut for nearly three years didn't matter much to her. It had taken them four months to have the front door fixed after someone broke a front door key off in the lock. Noted throughout the neighbourhood for being scruffy and full of mismatched furniture, burglars left the place severely alone, it looked in need of help.

Stu was in a funny mood all evening. He was friendly and open, as he always was with people he knew well, but there was an underlying tension, he just couldn't relax. By the time we crawled away to bed, I was more worried about my lover than what my father might get up to.

We undressed and slid into bed, he turned to me, and put his arms around me. I could feel the tension in him. I didn't feel much like talking either. So I slid up close to him and we just held each other. It seemed the only thing to do under the circumstances.

Rationally, we both knew there would come a day when my old man came back to haunt us. Neither of us thought that it would be that soon though.


	2. Chapter 2

The very next day, I did something so monumentally stupid, I cringe thinking about it. My only excuse is that I was so worried about what my loving daddy might do to Stu, and any of the others, I didn't really stop to think about what he might do to myself.

I went into the office and discussed the situation with my boss. Harvey. Now Harvey looks and sounds like an Eastend barrow boy made good. Flash rings, flash bracelets, gold chain round his neck. He stops short at the earrings, but then so would I. Except, he runs a very successful business, a firm of private investigators. He's not an ex copper, a bit of snooping around told me that. He's something else. What exactly that something else is I have no idea, but it has the whiff of the Official Secrets Act about it, and he is one scary bloke once you look past all the bonhomie and the wide boy act.

Harvey didn't want me to continue with the job, he wanted to swap me out with someone else. It was too risky. I thought differently. I thought if I could keep an eye on my father, I would at least know where he was at all times. It was better than hanging around waiting for his meatplate hand to slam down onto my shoulder.

Harvey, very grudgingly, gave in. He didn't want to. But there was a certain twisted logic to what I was saying to him, and he was favourably disposed towards me, knew I wasn't about to try it on, and so forth. So he let me go ahead.

Of course, knowing where my father was was one thing, knowing where all his goons were, something completely different. I was parked up in a different place to my previous spot, watching the yard, when something came through the side window, instinctively I ducked away from the shower of glass. A hand reached through and grabbed a handful of my shirt. "Anthony Monks, as I live and breathe." Jez Taylor... now the one bloke I know that's nastier than my father is Jez Taylor. He's a psychopath with a fondness for hurting people. He's huge. And gay. No one I know would ever have even commented on that, he's such an evil piece of work, anyone foolish enough to comment would have died very very slowly.

"Open the door, there's a good boy." I complied. He was quite capable of dragging me through the smashed window, and that would have really hurt. A pair of hands the size of dinner plates seized my arms from behind, holding me pinned. Presumably Jez's latest little friend, I smirked slightly at the irony, keeping my eye on Jez. Taking your eye off Jez was always a bad idea. He was smiling, which was bad. When Jez Taylor smiled, someone got hurt. "I've got someone who wants to see you."

"OI..." yelled a voice. I took a chance, I glanced back, bad move. A fist like a sledgehammer slammed into my gut. I would have folded, only the iron grasp holding me upright prevented me. Max Carter came charging over to us. I groaned. Max might have been able to extract me from the clutches of Jez Taylor and his little friend, but Max was exposing himself to serious risk. I doubt he thought of that when he did it, because I had no doubt that this was something to do with Stu and Jack Meadows, but Max... if they thought that was a good idea, I could have told them different.

I was right. Max reached us. "Police. Let him go, sir." And a third person stepped into my field of view. The one person I really didn't want to see. My father. The gun in his hand was pointed right at Max's head.

"Police?" His voice held a cruel tone of wondering enquiry. I braced myself. This was going to be bad.

And it was. They dragged us inside the rundown warehouse. I desperately tried to play for time. "Dad, look Max is a copper, if you hurt him they'll be down on you like a ton of bricks." It didn't work.

He spun round and stared into my face. And I knew then that I had made the mistake that was going to cost me a serious beating. "Max?" There was something in his eyes, in the way he said Max's name, I realised he knew that I had crossed the divide. I tried to brace myself again, because this was going to really hurt.

Something slammed like a pile driver into my back at about kidney height. I collapsed to the floor. A boot came down heavily on my right arm which was resting against a pallet. The boot slammed down hard. And I heard my arm break. I screamed. A hand dragged me to my feet. My right arm just dangled. Waves of pain shot up and down it and I couldn't think beyond that. Another fist slammed into my body, those huge hands were holding my arms again, I tried to block out the pain, but I just couldn't think straight.

Time seemed to have stood still. I apologise if my recollections of what happened after that seem a bit confused and hazy, but getting beaten to a pulp tends to concentrate the mind on the source of pain and very little else.

Hell really was on earth, and I was going through the torments of it. I have vague impressions of the disgust and horror on Max's face as he watched my father's two goons and my father batter me and the pity and misery on his face as he was powerless to intervene. He wanted to. But there was no way he could.

Everything hurt. Pain was coming from places I didn't know I had. All I wanted was for it to stop. Then there was the most almighty bang, and the massive wooden sliding door vanished. There was a lot of shouting. The hands that had been holding me let go, I staggered. A body pressed up against mine, a shoulder went under mine to support me, and my lover slid his right arm around my waist.

How he came to be there was a mystery, I had the confused impression of my boss looking me over, then someone came up the other side of me, and I heard Jo's voice, she sounded very far away, which was strange, because I was sure she was standing right next to me. There was a strangled bellow, and my father lunged for me.

Something big, strong and fearsome moved past us and nailed my father without even breaking into a sweat. I had time to realize that I was right, the one person my father should never annoy was Dr Lara Kennedy, then someone touched my right arm and I just let go.

It was a smell that woke me. That smell. The scent that tells you that you're flat on your back in hospital instead of a Southsea Island with your lover, which was what you were happily imagining. What is that smell? And why do all hospitals smell like it? Can't they try for something that stinks less, that doesn't remind you that every inch of your body is radiating pain. Then there was the sense of touch. Fingers touching mine. The fingers were quite still, as though their owner was fast asleep, they were curled limply against my hand. Then there was sound. Breathing. The owner of the fingers was leaning against the bed I was lying in. I pried open an eye. Stu was half sprawled in a chair next to my bed, slumped against it, his head resting heavily on his bent arm, his other hand holding mine.

"Ant, how are you feeling?" a gentle hand came down on the back of my arm and stroked my wrist. I looked up at Jo.

"Like death." I croaked.

"hmmm." Stu made a sort of grunting noise, and looked round at me. The instant flash of relief in his eyes told me that I wasn't actually dead, and that this wasn't some kind of weird dream. His fingers clutched my good hand tighter.

I felt hazy and confused. And there was a deadweight pressing on my chest. I rolled my eyes downwards to discover that this was my right arm. The cast stretched from my knuckles to up past my elbow, they'd thoughtfully slipped a pillow under my arm to support it, and keep most of the weight off my battered ribs, but nothing could disguise the rigid weight of the cast. My arm was throbbing. Not much now, but I sensed that that was going to get a lot worse and soon.

Both Stu and Jo were looking very anxious. Stu reached out with his free hand, and gently took hold of the fingers of my right hand, his thumb stroked along the edge of the cast, over my knuckles. I looked at the mixture of pain, confusion, and downright fury on his face, and realized that someone had told him how my arm had been broken. He had the look of a man who might want to keep an appointment in a dark alley one night. I gripped his other hand with my good hand and diverted his attention. "Promise me you won't do anything stupid!"

"I won't." It was clear that someone had already said that to him. His response was grudging, but accepting.

I didn't feel up to a long conversation, but it was nice to have Stu and Jo there. And wherever Jo was, I suspected that Lara wasn't far behind. I was right. Footsteps approached, and a husky voice, with just a hint of an accent, enquired whether I was decent. I decided that that joke was getting old fast. I grunted something that might have been "come in" which she obviously took as an open invite. She was followed by Max, who pulled up a chair on the other side of my bed.

I was hugely relieved to see him. He'd tried to save my bacon at considerable risk to his own neck. Lara looked me over critically. Which I found slightly unnerving, particularly as I know what her job is. "You'll live."

"You needn't sound quite so disappointed." I countered. "But thank you for saving my life."

"I was never there, but you're welcome."

I knew I was feeling a bit less than up to par, but there was nothing wrong with my memory. Unfortunately. I was just trying to work out what the heck was going on when another set of footsteps approached my bed and all became miraculously clear. My boss. Harvey.

"How are you feeling? Pretty lousy I imagine." I nodded. He looked me over. Nowhere near as critically as Lara, but with a certain connoisseur's understanding, suddenly certain things added up and the puzzle pieces fitted. He must have been following me. There was no way that Stu and Jo could have turned up so quickly without him.

More footsteps. It was like Piccadilly Circus in rush hour now, and I was starting to feel very tired. My right arm was throbbing in earnest, pain radiating up and down. It turned out to be another couple of coppers. These two were in uniform, the larger of the two I recognized as Sergeant Callum Stone, the pc I didn't recognize but he introduced himself as Arun Ghir. There was movement off to my left and I looked up. Harvey and Lara had vanished.

I got a masterclass in lying to the police. Though there is a difference. When police officers lie to each other it's all extremely civilized, everyone knows everyone else is talking total rubbish, but they preserve the fiction nicely, there isn't even the vaguest hint of a knowing look. Sgt Stone wrote long involved notes in his note book. I added what I could remember, which outside of being beaten to a pulp wasn't much.

A steely eyed nurse appeared. A ward sister. And she flushed them out. Including Stu. Who leaned over the bed to kiss me as he was shooed away. I lay back against the pillows and gratefully accepted the pain medication she handed me.

I don't know what time it was when I woke again. It was late, and Stu was back in his seat by the bed, one hand holding mine, fitfully dozing and waiting for me to wake up. "Stu." I whispered, and he woke up.

"Huh." He sat up straighter, and rubbed an eye with the heel of his hand. He blinked at me and instantly looked worried. "Are you in pain?"

I must have pulled a face at that one, because his expression went from looking panicked to looking hurt, and he hunched a shoulder. I squeezed his hand. And he looked at me, his eyes dark and solemn, "I thought they were going to kill you." His voice wobbled a bit, "that I wouldn't be able to get there in time."

We had lived together for nearly a year. We had expressed our feelings for each other on many occasions, but I had never felt as loved and needed as I did right at that moment. My body felt broken in bits, but perversely I had never been happier. I tugged him close, and we kissed passionately.


End file.
